Superhero Adventures, UK Style

Inspired by the adventure “The Persephone Extraction”

Back on the Crate with their two civilian passengers, the team made ready to head towards the closed city of Norilsk, three thousand kilometres northeast of Moscow. Akira had to wonder whether his animated statue of a hound had deactivated once they’d left the cemetery or if ‘ol’ Ironjaws’ would continue to attack the zombies until nothing remained. He had told the others that the iron hound would just deactivate once the task was completed but now he wasn’t sure, but it was too late to do anything about it. They still had a long flight in front of them.

Thanks to Darya’s ‘abilities’, they knew that Norilsk had been a closed city during Soviet times and still restricted access by non-residents even now. Thankfully, the level of surveillance they’d experienced in Moscow was unlikely to be duplicated there though they still didn’t know where ‘Norilsk Box 21’ was located.

The Crate began to rise off the river bottom heading towards the surface when Darya shouted at them to stop. She explained that several members of the ‘Zashchitnik Naroda’ (People’s Defenders) were flying above them searching the river from the air.

She began to list them, Alph they had met previously, accompanied by Narodnaya Okhrana (People’s Guard), Serpa (Sickle), Animus and  Bogmolotok II (God’s Hammer).

Somehow, they must have tracked the energy discharge of the teleports arrival point to be so precise about where to search. On the riverbank, directing them was a man in a wolf-like suit of armour; he was the only one not actively searching the stretch of the river that the Crate was in. Thankfully, the Crate was shielded and in stealth mode but its presence would be obvious once it breached the surface due to water running off the hull.

X-Ray was getting bad vibes from the team – something, rather than someone, was directing the search and it wasn’t totally human. He could feel the presence of anti-life nearby. It flowed through the man in the iron mask on the shore but it originated elsewhere. The team above were in thrall and he suspected that their leader was a ‘Renfield’, a servant of the vampires, manipulating his teammates to do their bidding. That had to include eliminating them to ensure the Pale Brotherhood had no competition finding the remaining virus.

He seriously considered heading up and attacking the man in the wolf-like mask and had to be talked out of it by the others.  Banshee piloted the Crate downriver while returning to the river bottom hoping to get far enough away before surfacing. Two of the Russian superheroes appeared to be moving in the same direction, watching the surface above them though it seemed as though they were just being thorough rather than actually being able to track them. 

As they started to move, a lightning bolt struck the river above them and discharged into the water, followed a few seconds later by another strike. Shoals of stunned and dead fish began to float to the surface as a result of Bogmolotok’s lightning bolts. They needed a distraction and fast. 

Akira smiled, this was his territory. He began to gesture with his hands even as he spoke the words required to request the assistance of the Pharos. They were immortal, immaterial magical beings that resembled floating, glowing spheres of light or fire that existed in a realm of raw and chaotic energy; miniature “living stars” that might be responsible for the legend of the will-o’-the-wisp on this world.

Having gained their ‘favour’, he requested the power to conjure forth the Phantasms of Phoros, also known as the “Fata of the Phoros,” in the water outside, floating, flickering orbs of light similar to the Phoros themselves. Unlike many magically made illusions, these images were formed of light visible to all, not hallucinations in the targets’ minds. He then instructed them to float away from the Crate, upriver so as to resemble something moving in the depths. It seemed to work as the fliers followed the orbs as they travelled away from the Crate. As soon as they were some distance away, they risked breaking the surface, rose into the sky and headed towards Norilsk as, in the distance, they could see the People’s Defenders blasting the lights.

They had four and a half hours of flight in front of them, time to eat and try to figure out what and where the mysterious Box 21 was.

Mary remembered that it had been a feature of the old Soviet Secret State that research installations were anonymised in some way.  Was Box 21 a hidden scientific base that had survived the collapse of the USSR?

As they entered Siberian airspace and flew deep into the Arctic Circle, Darya’s eyes went dark as she began to syphon off information from the ‘secure’ Russian network cables buried in the ground below them.

Norilsk, she informed them (whether they wanted to know or not) was a closed city in Krasnoyarsk Krai, located south of the western Taymyr Peninsula, around 90 km east of the Yenisey River and 1,500 km north of Krasnoyarsk. Norilsk was 300 km north of the Arctic Circle and 2,400 km from the North Pole. It had a permanent population of 182,701 and up to 220,000 if you included temporary inhabitants. It was the second-largest city in the region after Krasnoyarsk.

It was the world’s northernmost city, and the second-largest city (after Murmansk) inside the Arctic Circle. Norilsk and Yakutsk were the only large cities in the continuous permafrost zone.

Norilsk had originally used gulag labour to exploit the massive nickel deposits. Nickel mining and smelting still dominated the city’s economy and environment. Norilsk was responsible for one percent on its own of global sulphur dioxide emissions and was one of the most heavily polluted places on earth. Acid rain had created a “dead zone” the size of Germany.

A company town; little happened here that did not serve the ends of Norilsk Nickel, and its oligarch owners even as the ordinary people struggled against the elements and the pollution. They were very aware that all non-residents required permits to visit.

They eventually reached the city and looking down on the bright blood red river probably polluted due to an uncontained leak from a mining facility, they immediately elected to find somewhere other than it to hide the Crate. They headed away from the river. The Norilsk smelting Nickel plant itself was a gargantuan hellscape where workers had to use gas bottles or airlines to work on the factory. Snow and ice still lay on the streets and pavements despite the season and the apartments were built close together to provide shelter from the wind. They’d been designed to deal with 10-metre snowdrifts and rested on supports to raise them above the permafrost.

As they searched for an abandoned warehouse to set down in and hide the Crate, they couldn’t help notice the toxic environment and air pollution and the numerous contaminated slag heaps and polluted ‘lakes’ as the summer thaw floods raised the river level by several metres.

Eventually they found an abandoned warehouse with rusted padlocks indicating it hadn’t been used for some time. They flew the Crate inside away from prying eyes. They then left Irina and Darya inside as they headed towards the centre having rendered themselves invisible. X-Ray reached out with his senses, trying to get a reading on any undead. He got a vague feeling, like a bad taste in his mouth, coming from the direction of the city centre, other than that he had nothing. The pollution in the air gave them all bad headaches and the stench in the air made them gag as they breathed in the all-invasive fumes that permeated everywhere.

They agreed that their objective wasn’t to engage vampires but to prevent them obtaining any more of the modified Mar-V variant virus to further weaponise. X-Ray readily admitted that his ‘feelings’ could be nothing more than the fact that this city was an infected scar on the Earth’s surface, a polluted abomination of a place and nothing more. He needed to get closer to whatever was putting him on edge to confirm one way or another.

Darya contacted them over their commdots to tell them that she’d found a local report online about the death of two local teens in a nearby blighted forest. Both had apparently been drained of blood and their remains ripped to pieces. The authorities had presumed it had been a bear attack. It was the mention of the lack of blood at the scene that had stood out to her. The local Police had reported them missing only a week or so ago.

“Vampire bear?” was Akira’s response. “It’s possible…” he muttered as his companions stared at him in disbelief.

“If the attack occurred several days before what would be the point of us visiting the scene now?” questioned X-Ray. Better to seek out whatever was affecting him. That, whatever it was, was at least current.

The good news was that the number of armed (and armoured) Police on the street was minimal, especially in comparison to what they had seen in Moscow. Those they did see were in vehicles and not directly accosting the citizens for their ID. Clearly, Norilsk didn’t warrant the same degree of security (or paranoia) as the Capital.

They had noticed the checkpoints though on the outskirts, so clearly the focus was on checking the ID of new arrivals coming into the city rather than harassing those already here. Admittedly, given the wind chill and permafrost underfoot, there weren’t that many people out on the streets themselves.

Relying on Banshee’s ability to turn everyone invisible, they followed X-Ray’s senses towards the minimalist centre of the city with its apartments and shops set on stilts above the frozen ground.

Life in Norilsk obviously meant living indoors. For most of the year, it was too cold even in Summer to go outside for any longer than absolutely necessary. Children played in windowless halls; people socialised in each other’s homes or in community centres in each apartment bloc. Nightlife was almost non-existent; the city was extremely insular, with the workers drowning their sorrows in cheap Vodka behind locked doors. Strangers could wander the endless tunnels and corridors without meeting another soul after working hours were done.

Apart from the necessary shops and supermarkets, there appeared to be a couple of bars or nightclubs. One in particular, Club Turbo, drew his attention, not least because the sign was in English characters not Cyrillic. X-Ray thought it might be the ideal place to recruit assistance. “Yes, for the vampires”, murmured Banshee. They noticed a man below was rushing, going from shadow to shadow, as he made his way towards the club, his head covered in a hood as he deliberately avoided the fading spears of sunlight that pierced the street below. As they watched, he made his way across to the club and entered. He appeared to be young and wearing a distinctive, thick rain jacket.

Akira spoke first, but the others echoed his sentiment when he said, “We need to follow that young man.” Invisible, they followed him in and found themselves in a bar area and a small but stylish dance floor that doubled as a nightclub. There were about 30 people inside, mostly sitting and listening to Western music or drinking. Most of the clientele were young, in their early 20’s. That’s when they realised that there were two versions of the man they’d followed inside, identical twins dressed the same, or? The version heading towards the back of the dancefloor was clearly trying to avoid his duplicate at the bar who was chatting enthusiastically with the young barmaid.

Which was the man they’d followed in, though? The man at the bar was in the process of buying a drink while the other was fixated on heading towards an armoured door on the other side of the dancefloor.

Time for the team to split up; an invisible Akira headed towards the bar while Banshee and X-Ray  went towards the back room, passing a large muscular gentleman with an excess of tattoos on his neck, arms and wrists guarding the door. They ignored him and phased through the door only to find themselves in a covert but brightly lit gambling den with a crowded roulette wheel and several card tables surrounded by dozens of people focused on losing all of their money.

 Seeing the muscular tattooed male staff watching the punters, they got the impression this had to be a Bratva operation, Russian mafiya. Banshee could see unnatural bulges under their jackets that indicated that they were armed and not covertly. Across the room they heard someone shout out “Aleksey!” as one of the muscular ‘gentleman’ in an excessively expensive suit grabbed their target by the shoulders lifting him off his feet and muttered in his ear something about hoping he was willing to ‘replay’ his debt. The other punters ignored the violent interaction in their midst and carried on with their gambling addiction.

Aleksey apparently owed the Bratva money, a lot of it but they appeared willing to trade it for information. IT suddenly occurred to Banshee that this was why they’d seen two Aleksey; one of them was a shapechanger, possibly a vampire, trying to gain access to this knowledge that was clearly valuable.  X-Ray used his infravision to check to see if anyone had an abnormal body heat reading. Aleksey stood out.

Outside, at the bar, the other Aleksey was chatting up the pretty barmaid, explaining that he was due to head out on another delivery that night and did she want him to bring her back anything from her father? He had another tanker of diesel to drop off at the base so if she phoned her father he could collect it for her when he met the guards at the fence.

Akira used the commdots to inform the others that he thought he’d found the right one to follow and he was due to head out soon, but to where? Perhaps they needed to hitch a ride with him and see where he went? Akira felt sure that this hadn’t been the version they’d spotted outside, not least because he could now see a couple of empty shot glasses on the counter on the other side of him. He gave the impression of having been at the bar for some time, though he was clearly nervous about being in the club, downing his latest glass of vodka in one gulp.  “Come with me, Galina. It’s not safe here for either of us, I can drop you off at your fathers when I drive to the fence.” he whispered to her.

Was he a ‘Renfield’ type? Akira elected to bide his time and follow him when he left.

Inside the gambling den, Banshee and X-Ray watched their Aleksey being manhandled by the gorilla of a mafiya thug. Then as they watched, the situation suddenly switched. ‘Aleksey’ moved at superhuman speed, grabbing hold of the gangster and lifting him one-handed off the ground before flinging him violently into the ceiling. His body shattered with the impact as half the roof collapsed down on top of his falling body, which fell on one of the card tables causing it to collapse in pieces.

The clientele reacted with screams and started to flee towards the door behind X-Ray and Banshee, though several clearly tried to grab at the piles of chips on the table despite the resulting chaos and hysteria. Aleksey opened his mouth to show large fangs as it hissed at the others trying to escape.

It was no longer disguising the fact that it was a vampire as its features began to morph into a different, more inhuman face. He was stronger though than any other vampires they’d met before, ‘jacked up’ possibly?

X-Ray responded with a full-blown gravi-kinetic assault on their still morphing ‘Aleksey’.  The typhoon-like assault impacted the vampire unexpectedly, knocking him off his feet and into a nearby pillar shattering it into multiple fragments as he was knocked through it. Despite this, he was left only dazed as Banshee unleashed an ‘icy stare’ at him. The pillar collapsing meant the winter blast missed but iced up the area.

Outside the sound of the collapsing ceiling and attack reached the bar and Akira tried to contact his teammates to check that they were okay.  Both the barmaid and the other Aleksey seemed frightened by the unexpected sound followed by screams and people running out of the backroom in panic. One of the patrons in the bar, a weedy-looking man who was sitting at a nearby table stood up and rushed across to the bar, grabbed the girl and dragged her over the bar as he bared his fangs. It was only then that Akira realised that her attacker was floating above the ground.

“Ah, guys I’ve a flying vampire in here and he’s not misted!” Akira whispered over his commdot. “We’ve got an angry one in here,” was the reply. Akira unleashed several mystical blasts in response, turning visible in the process.

The blasts hit and smashed him into the wall, forcing him to let go of the girl who was now sprawled across the counter. Despite the strength of the assault, the vampire was only staggered by the multiple blasts. Damn! He’d hoped he would be able to take out the vampire before it could respond to his materialising out of thin air. Nothing for it but to continue blasting it and hope it focused on attacking him rather than the girl.

Akira’s blasts hit again and again, cutting into his flesh and dissected him, sundering his spine and shattering his ribcage while splattering his organic remains over the wall behind him, though even this didn’t kill the creature outright. His teeth clenched still trying to bite despite the degree of damage he had suffered.

They needed to leave. He glanced around but there was still no sign of his teammates and he was sure the creature was slowly reforming, despite being literally smeared across the wall and floor and his bodily organs exposed or crushed by the attack. Galina and Aleksey were both vomiting up their guts at the sight and stench of crushed organs or possibly at the knowledge that their attacker was still not dead! “Ratatouille revenge!” screamed an exhausted and now visible Akira as he reached over and helped Galina to climb off the bar.

Inside the gambling den, X-Ray could hear something smash hard into the wall outside as he focused on taking down his toothy and apparently powered opponent. “Do we need this creature alive or not?” he asked his companion. She shook her head as X-Ray unleashed a radiation matrix of ultraviolet around the creature, trapping it in a cage of sunlight. He then shrunk the energy cage around it, him. Would it be strong enough to hold him? It held though as he looked around several of the Bratva had recovered from the shock and had drawn their guns. X-Ray was glad that both he and Banshee were still invisible as they unleashed a storm of bullets into the caged vampire. The bullets wouldn’t kill, but would hopefully weaken him, at least for the present. The wounds surprisingly weren’t bleeding and the cage would dissipate once they left, leaving the Bratva to deal with an angry and injured vampire. Funnily enough, neither Banshee nor X-Ray felt any desire to protect the mobsters from their fate if they remained.

Outside Akira used his ‘charm’ on Galina and the real Aleksey to try to persuade them to take him to her fathers and quickly before the vampires recovered or the Police arrived. He elected to tell them his real identity and his connection to the ‘Internationally famous Balance’.

He explained to them that he needed to accompany them on their forthcoming trip into the wilderness to the ‘fence’. Aleksey admitted he was a truck driver and was due to head out any time now to the installation he referred to as the fence since that was as far as he was allowed to go. He explained he’d never been inside the compound as he was expected to unhitch the tanker of diesel he delivered for the backup generators at the main gate and then the soldiers manually moved it inside the wire.

He laughed, “why do they even need the barbed wire? The gulag didn’t bother with walls or fences to keep the prisoners in. In this place, attempting to leave is death. Where can you walk to!”

Well, that cleared up one mystery, the reason the vampires had decided to duplicate this man. The clearly hoped that they could replace him and thus gain access to what was presumably Box 21! 

“We need to leave before the Police arrive,” he muttered then looked at the figure slowly pulling himself back together on the back wall, still alive despite being torn apart and shuddered as he said to Galina, “You can’t stay here, you need to come with us, at least until this matter is cleared up by the authorities.”

Reluctantly, she nodded her agreement. Akira turned to Aleksey, “You’ll have room for one more, won’t you? I need to come along for your safety and I want to see this fence.”

Aleksey responded, looking back at the figure spread across the wall, “Okay, but you need to leave with us now. It’s about twenty-one kilometres northeast of the city and the road is non-existent so it will be a hazardous journey. On your own head be it.”

Galina wasn’t happy about Akira coming along and explained “This is a dangerous place and it would be safer if you don’t go there. People doesn’t go anywhere near that place, some of these bases are too dangerous. I’d keep away if I were you.”

Akira smiled; Galina was clearly lying but why? “Why wouldn’t I want to go with you?” he asked. “He’s going to old military sites, they’re dangerous and the guards are bored at guarding such places and may look unkindly on an ‘international man about town’ as you called yourself turning up. Better to stay away and be safe.” Akira smiled, “By safe you mean stay here?”

He turned and walked to the front door, opening it. He just hoped that Banshee and X-Ray would follow invisible while he kept up a conversation with the girl as to why he wanted to travel with them rather than make his own way to the base, the location of which of course he knew but he lacked transportation to get there on his own.

It the back room X-Ray and Banshee phased through the door knowing the still shrinking energy cage cutting into their captive vampire would fade quickly once it was no longer sustained, leaving the mobsters to deal with an angry, injured and cornered vampire in their midst. X-Ray was clearly upset at leaving an ‘enemy behind’ but allowed himself to be persuaded that their mission outweighed any enemy. The vampire reconstituting itself next to the bar he ignored, assuming it was too badly injured to survive.  He failed to see what Akira had seen; that the sinews and muscles were pulling themselves back together as the shattered bones knitted themselves together, albeit slowly.

Galina was still trying to persuade Akira to not go with them to the base, which surprised Aleksey who confirmed that the base they were heading to was her home, was where her father lived and worked… Why try to persuade their new friend not to come along with them?

In the distance, they could hear the sound of Police sirens approaching. They used the back roads to avoid meeting anyone before they reached Aleksey’s old and battered truck with a fuel tanker attached and climbed inside the cramped cabin. An invisible X-Ray and Banshee were forced to travel outside sitting on the roof of the truck, with X-Ray forced to create a force field around himself to try and keep warm against the winds. Banshee being immune in her Ban Sidhe form to effects of weather had no such difficulty.

Travel was slow as they travelled through the twilight, as there were no real roads to their destination. Inside the cabin Galina reluctantly explained that the installation they were heading to, she called it Norilsk-21, was situated in a mountain valley and built on the site of one of the early attempts to mine the nickel ore using gulag labour in the ‘30s.

When more promising deposits were found elsewhere, the mine was repurposed as a network of labs and support structures out of the view of US spy planes and satellites. A number of crumbling apartment blocks were built huddled close together around other ancillary buildings and the garrison blockhouse. At the height of the Cold War, hundreds of scientists and support staff worked there – now, only a few dozen of the hardiest souls remain. Many left after the industrial accident twenty years before, which killed her mother as well as dozens of others. Nothing was the same after that. These days the base was mostly mothballed and funds for current research were thin. She admitted that her father was the main researcher but refused to say what he was researching.

She admitted the accident was a fire which was caused when some ‘chemicals’ exploded and seemed surprised when Akira mentioned it was viruses. She reluctantly admitted that the fire happened when the lab safety protocols resulted in an explosion to prevent them from being released. Despite this, the site was still guarded by an, admittedly, understrength company of soldiers from a motorised rifle unit that was rotated every six months, commanded by a Major Solokov who was based permanently at the installation. He apparently possessed neither the necessary political connections nor the economic resources to be relocated elsewhere.

“That must have been tough on you,” said Akira. “I was just a baby when she died, I never knew her. Papa doesn’t talk about the accident or her very much. Doesn’t really talk much at all.” she replied before she went quiet and refused to say any more.

Akira reached over and touched her elbow as though to console her but really to read her past. Visions confirming her words as a cacophony of images of her growing up without many friends or access to childhood activities appeared in his mind, a lonely childhood. However, she was aware that the base had contained and worked with deadly weaponised diseases. Still did, though mainly it just stored samples rather than making them more virulent. Then something flashed through her mind about what she referred to as ‘shadow people’. Dead but not dead, endlessly sleeping. The image of large mist-filled, tube-like containers appeared, man sized, she saw a pale human hand pressed against the inside of one of the glass cylinders. She’d seen them as a child when her father had been bricking up one of the labs, the one ravaged by fire, the same fire that had killed her mother! She hadn’t been back since.

He probed deeper into her memory, seeking details that her conscious mind had ignored or forgotten and found them. He saw the layout of the vault.

The biopreparat vault itself was accessed through a security station built against the side of the mountain. Blast doors sealed the entrance tunnel and required power to operate, but pedestrian access was via a smaller airlock style door through a decontamination suite and staff changing area.

The pedestrian access corridor joined the large main chamber next to the massive blast doors. This was an irregular chamber clearly man-made and the tool marks were still visible on the walls. The chamber was wide and the ceiling eight metres high, with three tunnels leading off from the main area in a haphazard spacing following the original veins of ore. The chamber had been home to a wide variety of mothballed medical and light industrial equipment, microscopes, sample freezers, pressurized gas tanks, barrels of chemicals, boxes of industrial glassware and so on. In the dark against the furthest wall were five large cylinder-like containers, their contents concealed by an icy mist inside. The shadowy shape of people could be seen and he could ‘see’ the hand she’d spotted and had haunted her nightmares ever since.

The sleepers, the tubes looked vaguely familiar and he thought they might be used to put someone in cryosleep, he just wished he knew why… He wondered if they might be vampires or military experiments?

The access corridor to Lab 1 had been bricked up and a large biohazard sign stencilled in the centre of the wall. Lab 2 had an airlock door; the heavy metal winding mechanism visible through the glass would not have been out of place in a submarine. In her mind, it had been dark and deserted.

The corridor to Lab 3 had been still in use, the newest equipment and supplies had been stacked in the corridor and most of the lightbulbs had been working. He just wished he knew how long ago this memory had been. He broke contact with her. She was still trying to persuade him to go back with Aleksey after he’d delivered the tanker of diesel for the emergency generators. She was clearly protective of her father even if they hadn’t been close for a long time and was worried Akira’s presence could cause him ‘problems’.

As quietly as he could, Akira whispered to his teammates what he’d learned about Norilsk-21 and confirmed that this had clearly been a WMD facility in the past and that was why they still had armed guards as they had to be protecting something for all these years. X-Ray admitted he was worried that the sleepers were ancient hibernating vampires captured by the Russians at some point. Akira responded, “I’m not afraid of some geriatric bloodsuckers!” X-Ray responded with “The most powerful ones are generally also the most ancient and are more difficult to put down. We’re also heavily outnumbered.” 

A few minutes later, they arrived at the perimeter. The area was fenced off with a double row of old, rusted wire, however it was badly dilapidated and there are plenty of gaps filled with snowdrifts.  Aleksey explained that the garrison made periodic patrols around the perimeter by truck but they were heading towards a gate where he would unhitch the tanker and the soldiers would haul it inside the perimeter. In the distance, at the base of an open cast mine, lay a small town most of it now deserted and abandoned. He ‘knew’ high up on the side of the mine would be the vault and labs he’d seen in Galina’s mind. This clearly had housed hundreds of staff at one time, but obviously no longer.

He just wished he knew how to deal with this situation; they couldn’t just blow up the virus containers, could they?

Meanwhile Aleksey parked up in from of the gate and unhitched the tanker as a small patrol of soldiers in white combats approached and unlocked the gate. Galina stepped down and walked towards them, greeting some of them cheerily. Akira knew he wouldn’t receive the same friendly welcome so turned invisible as soon as she was out of sight. Meanwhile, Aleksey had got back in his truck and was driving away. Galina looked around and when she couldn’t see her new ‘companion’ explained to the guards that she’d brought a potential intruder who was asking about the base with her for questioning but he seemed to have vanished. The Second Lieutenant-in-charge immediately issued a search and detain order but felt it prudent to not set off the intruder alarms.  

Invisibly, he approached and whispered threats in her ear, which promised her similar punishment as had happened to the vampire in the bar if she revealed anything else and she went quiet but pushed into the middle of the squad seeking protection in numbers.

Speed was now of the essence, they needed to find the vault and figure out how to deal with the viral samples before the soldiers decided to escalate the situation and start a base-wide search for them. The three of them gathered together and headed towards the vault leaving the guards looking around for the disappearing intruder.

They flew towards the research base and phased through the security vault that Akira had ‘seen’ in Galina’s memories. Inside they could see an office and hear a man talking with someone, presumably Galina, over the phone. They ignored that as Akira followed the route painted by her memories into the research station.

Still invisible and insubstantial, the three of them headed towards the chamber and the three labs. Only Lab 3 was still in use as half a dozen scientists in sealed PPE gear and airlines were dissecting and taking samples from the remains of an ancient mastodon, presumably recovered from the permafrost. Lab 1 was still sealed while Lab 2 was accessible, it clearly was not heavily used as footprints can be seen in the dust and the entrance locked. A hand-carved Orthodox cross leaned against the base of the brick wall that covered the entrance to Lab 1.  Through the glass airlock of Lab 2, they could see three refrigerators were still in use with large data screens (unfortunately displaying Cyrillic) and temperature readouts in the minus range, fitted to the doors. The Lab looked as though it was mothballed and was now only accessed for storage of cultures. Did that include the Mar-V virus?

X-Ray approached the cylinders to confirm that they were cryonic chambers. Whatever was inside he got no reading or bad vibes from the figures contained inside them. Could they have been infected with the virus and frozen as a containment procedure?

They agreed that Lab 1 was likely bricked up because it had been the site of the explosion and might even still be contaminated. 3 had no storage facilities and was clearly the only facility still in use.

Lan 2 had dust on all of the surfaces and was clearly only used occasionally for storage, this seemed the most likely of the labs to contain the live samples they were looking for but just in case Akira laid his hand on the bricked up entrance to Lab 1 and tried to read its past. He immediately felt the aftermath of an explosion as the bricks were laid. He pulled back and proceeded to do the same on the airlock to the second lab. It had clearly not been accessed recently but couldn’t find a reason why the lab had been mothballed, just that it was only entered when the scientists needed to store samples in the secure freezers inside. The presence of airlocks confirmed that the designers had assumed that the samples stored inside would still be active.

If they could confirm that the virus they were seeking was inside, how would they destroy it; another fire or explosion? Did they really want to risk any of the samples inside escaping? How about all of the people working next door or elsewhere in the facility, did they really want to be the cause of their possible deaths?

They headed towards Galina’s father’s office and phased in. Inside, a middle-aged man was now talking face-to-face with a newly arrived Galina explaining why she’d agreed to bring this Akira with her to the installation. He also appeared unsurprised when she mentioned the creature that had attacked her in Club Turbo, clearly recognising it as a vampire, though the fact that some of them might have powers did.

They heard him ask himself, “Why are they coming here, what are they after?” That made Akira finger the Medallion of Modrossus and request the assistance of the trinity in reading the scientist’s mind. His mind opened and he reached out to ‘hear’ what the man was thinking. Galina’s father, Nikolay was aware of the biological samples and had actively worked on weaponising the Marburg virus before the accident that killed his wife. At present, he was primarily concerned about the anthrax virus they were recovering from the Mastodons’ thawed corpse.  That led him to wonder about the remaining Mar-V variant now stored in Lab 2.  The majority of the virus samples had been located in Lab1 when the accident happened and only a small sample had survived due to being in Lab 2 at the time. As far as he is aware, Lab 1 was still contaminated and he seemed unaware that some of it must have been stolen beforehand. A mental prompt by Akira caused him to remember the visit by General Sobotsky the day before the explosion and his insistence on checking the inventory himself. That had seemed weird at the time, more so now. He’d insisted on handling the sealed containers which was even weirder. He’d forgotten because of the fire and explosion that occurred that night. He thought it had been an industrial accident due to negligence in his and his staff’s part but suddenly he wasn’t so sure.

Another prompt of Nikolay’s mind made him think about the sleepers in the cryonic chambers. He was aware that they were stormers, activated Metas from Russia’s first encounter with the Silver Storm – sent here for testing and when they’d proved ‘uncooperative’ of their own volition, they were reprogrammed to serve a government entity that no longer existed, to defend the Motherland of the USSR before being put on ice, into cryogenic suspension, and subsequently forgotten.

Then Akira felt the downer that always followed such mental intrusion as his mind collapsed back on itself and his thoughts were only his own once more. What to do next? He shared what he’d learned with X-Ray and Banshee as they tried to work out what to do next. Flee with the samples and hope they could keep them safe or destroy them somehow?

Clearly, the ‘industrial accident’ in Lab 1 had been a deliberate attempt to cover for General Sobotsky’s theft of the Mar-V.  As they were deciding on their next course of action, they could hear a report sent to the base informing them that several unidentified helicopters were closing on Norilsk-21, likely with hostile intent and asking for permission to engage when the broadcast went dead. The base immediately went on red alert as the remaining troops prepared for an attack.

They were pretty sure who was behind the invasion fleet closing on the city. They had to destroy the remaining samples and help the civilian scientists and their families to flee if they could. The samples were in sealed and armoured fridges in Lab 2 and there was insufficient room inside for Banshee to phase through and materialise and they couldn’t risk smashing their way in in case that resulted in the virus escaping into the atmosphere or infecting any of the people making them patient zero for a potential worldwide epidemic.

Akira suggested dispatching them to another dimension where hopefully they couldn’t do any harm. He’d recently cast Morgane Le Corre’s mind into the abyss of the Nightmare dimension, could he physically cast the fridges into the same, sterile dimension?

Akira called on Weyan, the artisan, master of a vast and intricate clockwork universe of interlocking wheels and gears to open the doorways between.  It was said the purpose of the vast mechanism Weyan worked on constantly was to perfect creation in some way. The Seventh Wheel of Weyan, or the Wheel of Worlds, was a spell that opened wheel-shaped gateways between dimensions, in this case to open a doorway once more to the Realm of Melinoë, to her demesne of madness and nightmares.

He didn’t want to risk powering the fridges down so he made the portal swallow up the three fridges before closing it, thereby cutting off the power only once they were ‘elsewhere’.

X-Ray tried to extend his exotic senses towards the incoming helicopter and experienced a now familiar dread; the attacking craft had vampires on-board but most had to be just human. He couldn’t get rid of the feeling that everyone here was at risk as the intruders was likely a kill team.

Time to get the civilians somewhere safe and that meant getting them far away from Norilsk-21 before the helicopters got close enough to confirm their reason for being here.  Akira told the others to gather the people on the base together and he would teleport them to outside Club Turbo, then they had to gather the children and the scientists partners together and teleport them out. He briefly considered animating the Mastodon as a surprise for the incoming attackers but decided against it, not least because it was partially dissected and because he couldn’t spare the time or personal energy. 

The effort to teleport so many people left him exhausted as he formed gate after gate while X-Ray gathered the civilians who thankfully had already congregated in ‘secure’ locations when the sirens went off.  One of scientists explained that their families would be gathering at the only remaining school. Once he’d ‘persuaded’ the scientists to gather and be teleported out they immediately headed towards the school. The children needed no such ‘prompting’ to jump through the ball of light. The mothers and partners immediately followed, unwilling to be separated from their offspring.

Once all of the civilians were out, Akira managed one last gate and teleported the three of them out, this time to the warehouse where they had left the Crate and their two refugees. It was time to head back to the U of K. activating stealth mode they set off once more sneaking across the border to freedom.

Intermission

Back in the UK, both Irina and Darya applied for asylum at the immigration offices in London the next day. This was recorded and the process started. Irina was able to secure accommodation with a fellow journalist she knew from after the collapse of the USSR and before the rise of the current regime, Darya however was an obvious Meta and risked discrimination and ostracisation wherever she went.

It was Jeeves that suggested they seek refuge for her in London Below as Lady Door had managed to persuade her people to allow some physically-altered Metas to again dwell amongst them. As a result, a hooded Darya was with them the next day as they visited the centre of London.

Akira, Banshee and a bewildered Darya headed towards Cho Street in the Limehouse district to find ‘Trap Street.’ Of course, there was no such street on any map; in cartography a trap street was a fictitious entry on a map added for the sole purpose of tricking potential copyright violators.

When Repulse, Solvent and Blackstuff of the Untouchables had vanished, it had been down an extremely narrow unnamed alley running between two shop fronts on Cho Street.

The narrow alley now appeared to be a wide thoroughfare, admittedly cobbled and seemingly still gas lit, leading to what seemed to be a Georgian Stable house with a set of double carriage doors. Standing in front of them was a young woman in a mix mash of clothing and wearing bands of makeup over one eye as though it were some form of war paint.

They approached her and the girl touched the frame of the door. It suddenly glowed blue as the doors opened on an impossible sight. The inside was larger than outside and seemed to have once been some sort of engineering site with platforms on several levels.

Dozens of people mostly dressed in warm, cloaks and hoods and wearing surgical facemasks meandered around – this was obviously some form of marketplace rather than just shelters. Those would likely be located away from the entrance where the residents could feel safe

Then Frankie’s voice came over their Comms, <<Designation: The Balance, according to your ‘Stable door’ Protocol trackers the team has again instantaneously been transported to Camden in North London. I assume you have entered London Below with Darya?>> On a platform above them a young woman waved. Lady Door was waiting to meet Darya.